SteveJamieson.com

When dealing with large corporations, logical assumptions do not often apply—either because of incompetence, or tyrannical greed. Case in point…

A couple months ago, my church bought a font (or rather a license to use a font) from Adobe to use in all of our publications in order give everything a simple, uniform, attractive appearance. Part of my internship involves generating new teaching materials, so I need to use that font. Since Adobe fonts come with a 5-user license, and the font was only being used on two computers at the church, I figured that I would become user number three under the license, and that I’d just have to instal the Mac version of the font. Unfortunately, the church didn’t have the Mac version on hand. Nevertheless, since we have a multi-user license, I assumed that I would just have to contact Adobe to find out how to acquire the appropriate files under our existing license. Oh, what a wrong assumption that was! The licenses that Adobe sells apply on a platform-dependent basis, rather than on a cross-platform basis. That is, the license that the Church owns applies only to the Windows version of the font. Thus, in order to get the font installed on my one computer, the church would have to buy another 5-user license—a 5-user license for the Mac version. I don’t know about you, but I find that to be absolutely ridiculous.

I didn’t want to bother the customer service rep that I was talking to with the issue, so I got the customer service supervisor, Nicole, on the phone. However, she just got snooty and told me, “that’s the way it’s always been”, as if tradition somehow justifies a stupid business practice that discriminates against small businesses running cross-platform computing environments. I asked Nicole to talk to her supervisor, but she informed me that I’d have to schedule a call back. I knew I wasn’t going to get anywhere even if I worked my way up to President and CEO Bruce Chizen himself, so I gave up. Far be it from a giant corporation with lots of lawyers to offer flexible licensing options to its small customers. In the parlance of International Talk Like A Pirate Day, “Arrr! Those scurvy bilge rats oughtt’walk t’plank!”

I recently rediscovered my hatred for dating. Don’t get me wrong. I like relationships with women. That part is great! It’s the particular process of establishing relationships with the opposite gender that our society uses that I’m not so crazy about. I have issues with the dating system.

They say that, after a date, you have to wait 48 hours before calling her again. Wait, no, they say you have to wait three days. Wait, no, they say you have to wait a week. Wait… Well, they say a lot of things, and they often contradict each other. Everyone you ask for advice will tell you something slightly different, and, to take a line from the movie Magnolia, “which is which, and who only knows?”

However, it’s not just the disagreement within the dating system about its own rules that makes me suspicious of it. I also take issue with the reasoning behind these rules. Why do I need to wait a certain length of time to call for another date? They say I need to leave her wanting more. They say I want her to be wondering why I haven’t called—you know, to create a sense of mystery or something. On one level, I understand this—the level at which I’ve been conditioned to accept our particular courtship system as normal. On a deeper, more basic level, however, such explanations seem highly questionable in the context of the goal of dating. The ultimate goal of dating ought to be to form a long-lasting romantic relationship based on commitment, trust, and friendship. However, the reasoning behind the rules of dating reeks of emotional manipulation, which is antithetical to the intended goal. It seems to be more about the pleasure of getting her to like me in the short-term than about forming a long-term, healthy relationship.

They say that dating is a game, and that you have no choice but to play. Well, I’ve tried playing the game, and the game has betrayed me. I’ve seen, to a degree, how messy the dating system can make things. Following the dating system’s path to marriage leaves behind a trail of broken relationships, and even after all that, the marriages that it creates have a horrible success record. However, maybe I shouldn’t be so harsh on the dating system. After all, as sinful beings we tend to leave trails of broken relationships anyway, and there’s probably many other, more direct causes of divorce. Perhaps I shouldn’t be too quick to pin all of a nation’s relational woes only on the system that produced those relationships. Then again, one has to wonder if the dating system doesn’t contribute in some measure given the apparently deceitful attitudes underlying its rules—attitudes that are likely to be carried over from the dating relationship into the marriage relationship. If the system is fundamentally flawed in such a way, how can we expect the product to be anything but dysfunctional?

Sociologically speaking, the dating system is quite new. It is only within the past century that it has come into existence. The dating system as we know it began as a subtle mutation of the previous standard courtship system, and as it diverged from there in its development, it gradually became the new standard. This switch took courtship out from the home and from under parental supervision, and placed it into the freedom of the public square and into the realm of entertainment (see Beth Bailey, From Front Porch to Back Seat: Courtship in Twentieth-Century America).

While reflecting on the historical precursors to the dating system, I realized that it actually isn’t a very robust system. Many of the rules that we associate with the system today are not intrinsic to the system itself, but are developed and altered according to each generation’s experience with the basic principles of the dating system and the surrounding cultural atmosphere. This realization gave me a new perspective on the rules of dating, since I realized that they are pragmatic in nature, rather than deductions based on principles antithetical to the goal. This certainly explains why each person has a slightly different set of rules, and it also gives me hope that I might have just been given the wrong explanations for the rules.

For example, perhaps the reason why I have to wait some specified amount of time before calling for another date isn’t because I have to manipulate my way into a relationship. Perhaps, it’s because each individual needs a different amount of time to mentally and emotionally process through the development of the relationship, and therefore, I need to allow plenty of time for that to occur. The thing that strikes me about this possible change in explanation is that it replaces a self-centered focus—getting her to like me—with an other-centered focus—respecting the period of time the other person needs to process the developing relationship. Suddenly, the rules are loving instead of deceitful! Therefore, at least in this case, the problem isn’t necessarily systemic, but may be an issue of individuals with wrong attitudes. Of course, I could also be wrong.

Unfortunately, this conclusion, assuming it’s true, only allays my conscience so much. It helps me to understand the advice that I have been given recently, and to understand it in a more positive and constructive way than I initially received it. However, I still have some serious concerns about the dating system, including its core principles. I strongly suspect that there is a better system of courtship that could be used, which would foster better attitudes and develop stronger relationships—both with future spouses and other members of the opposite gender. I just wish I knew what it was.

Have you seen that Odor-Eaters® commercial? You know, the one where this guy is sitting on a sofa at a party with two very beautiful women, and he’s so concerned about foot odor that he sticks his feet under the conveniently placed oriental rug despite the fact that he has his shoes on. However, when the scene is repeated with an Odor-Eaters® product in his shoes, he feels so comfortable about his feet that he flips one of his shoes off in front of the two beautiful women and catches it much to everyone’s amusement.

Okay, honesty, who would do that? If you’re at a party and have the attention of not one, but two beautiful women, even if your feet smell like flowers, you do not flip a shoe off! That’s just crazy.

Or have you seen that commercial where one of those cigarette vending machines is chasing some guy down the street, tempting him because he’s trying to give up smoking, or something like that? Now, when was the last time you saw a cigarette vending machine? I haven’t seen one of those since I was a little kid. Didn’t they outlaw them in the late 80′s or early 90′s?

Who thinks of this stuff?

We are on the verge of a music revolution. MP3 players are hot sellers. Almost every computer sold today comes with a CD-R drive so people can burn their own music CD’s. Napster may be dead, but OpenNap, Gnutella, and other non-centralized music sharing protocols have risen to fill the niche. Increasing computing power, larger data storage capacities, and broadband internet connections are enabling us to enter an age where we can quickly transfer digital music files between computers, make our own compilation CD’s of our favorite songs, and carry hundreds or even thousands of songs in our pockets. In addition, some innovative artists are experimenting with online services that allow you to buy individual songs or entire albums to download in MP3 format. It’s an exciting new world of freedom to choose how to buy and listen to music.

However, this music revolution may die an early death, drowned in legal issues.

American copyright law was established in the U.S. Constitution. The purpose of the copyright clause was to encourage technological progress by establishing a limited time period during which only the creator of an invention could manufacture and sell the invention. Without such protections, there would not be much incentive to pour resources into research and development, since anyone could then immediately take the results of that work and benefit without the R&D investment. Copyright law also protects artistic works in a similar manner by preventing people from making and selling unauthorized copies of the work, which would deprive the artist of the benefit of his or her work.

Copyright law gives some very powerful, and necessary, protections to inventors and artists. At the same time, the law has traditionally been interpreted by the courts to grant some specific rights to consumers who purchase copyrighted works also. These rights are know as fair use, and describe the uses of copyrighted works which do not infringe on the rights of the copyright holder. These fair use rights include such activities as making back up copies and copies for personal use. For example, you are allowed to record TV shows with a VCR for later viewing, or copy songs from several CD’s to a tape so that you can listen to them on a tape player while at the gym.

However, these fair use rights are coming under attack. The entertainment industry is feeling threatened by activities such as the illegal sharing of music enabled by the combination of MP3 and the internet. In order to prevent this illegal activity the entertainment industry is implementing various forms of copy protection and lobbying for new copyright laws. The first such law was the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) which was passed in 1998.

The DMCA makes it illegal to circumvent any copy protection scheme. For example, all DVD’s are encoded with a copy protection code know as CSS, which makes all DVD’s encoded with CSS unreadable unless the DVD player has the necessary decryption code key to decode the data on the disc. All manufacturers of consumer DVD players and companies who sell computer software DVD players have payed the licensing fee to obtain and employ the decryption code key necessary to decode the DVD data in their products. However, at the time the DMCA was enacted, there was no company that made a software DVD player for Linux, so a clever programmer set out to break the CSS code and produce an open-source software DVD player for Linux users without the licensed decryption code key. He was successful, but the entertainment industry successfully sued to block the distribution of the software under the DMCA since the software circumvented the copy protection employed by DVD’s.

This example illustrates the problem with the DMCA. Many people just wanted software to play their DVD’s on their Linux computers—a perfectly legitimate use—however the DMCA made the software necessary for these people to exercise their fair use rights illegal. Unfortunately the DMCA is only the beginning and the proposed laws will only get more restrictive of fair use. In addition, the copy protection schemes that the entertainment industry is putting into use are becoming more troublesome. Some CD’s which have been recently released (mostly in Europe), carry corrupted data tracks. Consumer CD players ignore data tracks and proceed to the music data unaffected. However, computer CD-ROM drives, which are designed to check data tracks first, get stuck on the corrupted data track, and the discs may even cause the computer to crash. I believe that such CD’s infringe on our fair use rights to play music CD’s in any CD drive.

By opposing copy protection and more powerful copyright laws do I support the illegal distribution of copyright works (piracy)? By no means! All I want is the ability to use my fair use rights without technological or legal hinderance. Distributing unauthorized copies of copyrighted works is illegal even without new legislation such as the DMCA, so there is no reason for additional laws. Technological measures will eventually be defeated whether it is legal or illegal to do so anyway, so the only effect such copy protection will have is creating a terrible limitation on law-abiding consumers.

This is a serious issue that is not going to go away. If you see a CD that uses copy protection, do not buy it! Let your money talk. Also, contact your representatives and let them know that you do not support the recording industries attempts to limit fair use. Visit the links below, get educated, and act now!

DigitalConsumer.org – An organization that is lobbying against new legislation similar to the DMCA.
Celine Dion Killed My iMac! – Great article about the technical side of CD copy protection and how to defeat it with a magic marker!
Why the Music Industry Wants To Trash Your Computer – Article about CD copy protection, some legal considerations, and the recording industry’s strategy for abusing their power.